Richard Lugar

Richard Lugar

Template:TOCnestleft Richard Lugar is a Republican Senator from Indiana. He is the U.S. Senate's most senior Republican and longest serving U.S. Senator in Indiana history. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976 and won a sixth term in 2006 with 87 percent of the vote, his fourth consecutive victory by a two-thirds majority.

Richard Lugar and his wife, Charlene, were married September 8, 1956, and have four sons and thirteen grandchildren.

Committee service

Laugar is the Republican leader of the Foreign Relations Committee and a member and former chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.

Education

Senator Lugar graduated first in his class at both Shortridge High School in Indianapolis and Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He attended Pembroke College at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, studying politics, philosophy and economics.

Navy service

Senator Lugar volunteered for the U.S. Navy in 1957, ultimately serving as an intelligence briefer for Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations.

Business career

Senator Lugar manages his family's 604-acre Marion County corn, soybean and tree farm. Before entering public life, he helped manage the family's food machinery manufacturing business in Indianapolis with his brother Tom.

Early politics

As the two-term mayor of Indianapolis (1968-75), Lugar envisioned the unification of the city and surrounding Marion County into one government. Unigov, as Mayor Lugar's plan was called, set the city on a path of uninterrupted economic growth. He served three terms on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, including two terms as the Vice-Chair of the Commission, and served as President of the National League of Cities.

"Disarmament"

Senator Lugar has been a leader in reducing the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In 1991, he forged a bipartisan partnership with then-Senate Armed Services Chairman, Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), to destroy these weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. To date, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated more than 7,500 nuclear warheads that were once aimed at the United States.

Agriculture committee

As Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Senator Lugar built bipartisan support for 1996 federal farm program reforms, ending 1930s era federal production controls. He has promoted broader risk management options for farmers, research advancements, increased export opportunities and higher net farm income. Senator Lugar initiated a biofuels research program to help decrease U.S. dependency on foreign oil. He also led initiatives to streamline the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reform the food stamp program and preserve the federal school lunch program.

Combining his experiences on the Foreign Relations and Agriculture Committees and recognizing that energy security impacts every aspect of life in the United States, from the cars we drive and how much we pay at the gas pump to our vulnerability to foreign terrorism and our relationships with other countries, Senator Lugar launched the Lugar Energy Initiative.

Senator Lugar has promoted policies that spur economic growth, cut taxes, lead to job creation, eliminate wasteful government spending and reduce bureaucratic red tape for American businesses.

Supported by Council for a Livable World

The Council for a Livable World, founded in 1962 by long-time socialist activist and alleged Soviet agent, Leo Szilard, is a non-profit advocacy organization that seeks to "reduce the danger of nuclear weapons and increase national security", primarily through supporting progressive, congressional candidates who support their policies. The Council supported Richard Lugar in his successful Senate run as candidate for Indiana.

In Russia with Obama

Lugar, Obama in Perm, August 2008

A U.S. delegation headed by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was detained August 2005 for three hours at an airport in Russia before being allowed to leave the country for Ukraine.

Russian border guards at the airport in the Siberian city of Perm demanded to search the U.S. government aircraft carrying the delegation, which also included Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who was making his first foreign trip since becoming a senator. Obama is also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

American officials, citing a U.S.-Russian agreement that does not allow such inspections, refused to allow the search, leading to a three-hour standoff.

Fighting the Cuba travel ban

According to Boston Democratic Socialists of America's The Yankee Radical June 2009;

This travel ban, enacted in 1962, is now under attack from a left-right coalition including the Chamber of Commerce, agribusiness, Human Rights Watch and civil liberties groups. The other side, comprised of cold war hard liners and much of the Cuban émigré community, is using the lack of free elections and democratic rights in Cuba as arguments for keeping the ban. Although as Sam Farber notes in his recent book on the Cuban revolution, the original justification for the travel ban and trade embargo had nothing to do with reasons like these—it was Castro’s interference with the “freedom” of American corporations to dominate the Cuban economy.

According to Amnesty International, Cuba now has 58 political “prisoners of conscience”, down from the thousands of years past. Amnesty nonetheless opposes the American trade embargo and travel ban, as do most Cubans, including Oswaldo Paya, the leading democratic oppositionist. And this year efforts to at least lift the travel ban might actually succeed, give[[n our new President and Democratic Congress. The Senate bill, S.428, is sponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Dick Lugar (R-IN); in the House, Cape Cod Congressman]] Bill Delahunt is a key advocate. Contact his office for more information..

References

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